They’re paw-sitive about this show.
New Fox animated series “HouseBroken” is based on co-creator Clea Duvall’s cat, she said.
“[It’s] my very complicated cat, Twig. All I want to do is make her happy, and I just don’t know how. I wish we could go to counseling so she could tell me,” DuVall, 43, told The Post.
Premiering Monday, May 31st (9 p.m. on Fox) and co-created by DuVall, Jennifer Crittenden, and Gabrielle Allan,” “HouseBroken” follows the poodle Honey (voiced by Lisa Kudrow), a therapy dog who opens her living room to her fellow neighborhood pets for group sessions, as they work through their issues.
Among others, there’s Honey’s husband Chief (Nat Faxon), a sloppy sock-eating St. Bernard; Shel (Will Forte), a tortoise; Chico (Sam Richardson) the cat; Elsa (DuVall) the corgi, and stray cat who’s known as The Gray One (Jason Mantzoukas).
Kudrow, 57, who also recently appeared on HBO Max’s “Friends” reunion, told the Post that she shares some similarities with Honey.
“I know what it is to be that person where you mean well and you care a lot — but based on everyone’s reactions, you don’t seem to be the most fun person. That makes me laugh about myself,” she said.
“[Therapy] does interest me, I think it interests all of us. Going back to ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ with that group therapy, because people being vulnerable are trying not to be but they are, and that’s when anything with a personality is the most interesting.”
Even though both Kudrow and DuVall rose to prominence in the 1990s (with “Friends” and DuVall’s movies such as “The Faculty” and “But I’m a Cheerleader,”) they hadn’t crossed paths before “HouseBroken,” they said.
“This is one of the reasons why I wanted to do it,” said Kudrow. “I’m a big fan of Clea’s, and I saw who else was doing it and I was like, ‘I’m in! [The show] felt like I was cheating, like ‘I should be working right now!’ because I was enjoying myself so much.”
Over the past few years, DuVall has increasingly moved from acting to writing and directing, most recently writing and directing 2020 Hulu rom com hit “Happiest Season.”
“The first thing I ever wanted to be was a writer,” she said. “And then I started acting and got very lucky very quickly. And I really love acting, but also I just love filmmaking. I love being on sets, I love film crews and working with actors. Having more to do with the process was always something that I was interested in. I made my first movie in 2015 [‘The Intervention’] and from then on I was like, ‘I would rather be doing this’ and writing parts for actors who I love, like Lisa, then looking for parts for myself.”
“I am definitely more drawn to behind the camera things. I don’t want to say that I don’t want to act anymore, because who knows. If something that I really love comes up, I would definitely do it, but I feel way more drawn to writing and directing. And also it’s so time consuming to do that stuff that all my focus needs to be there.”